K. Ancrum discusses her latest novel ‘Icarus’

In the latest novel from K. Ancrum, Icarus, she builds on Greek myth to tell a modern, turbulent, coming-of-age story. The story follows Icarus Gallagher, a teenager who steals priceless art and replaces it with his father’s forgeries. One night, at the house they steal from, he runs into the target’s son, Helios. The two develop a friendship threatening the seemingly impervious walls Icarus crafts for himself. Their developing relationship shatters every rule Icarus makes as a means of protection.

This lovingly crafted novel speaks to the resilience of teenagers and the friendships forged that can save lives. From tender romance to breathtaking drama, Icarus is an engrossing, impossible-to-put-down read. We talked to Ancrum about the process of writing the book, her interest in Greek Mythology, and how to utilize criticism constructively.

Very light spoilers for plot related details below. This interview has been edited for clarity.

In your author’s note, you have a piece where you mention how teenagers always notice when another teenager falters. As someone who had my own Luca and Celestina, that really spoke to me. Can you speak to the importance of highlighting teenagers’ emotional intelligence? 

When I was growing up in the late ‘90s early 2000’s we had a type of young adult fiction book we used to casually refer to as “issue books.” They’d center on some sort of problem like divorce or their parents hate each other, someone has a drinking problem — whatever it is. It was designed to showcase a situation of kids learning or processing something. Most of the books were structured in such a way that there’s either an adult there to fix the situation or gives the teenager the information they need to survive. Or the teenager is completely by themselves, it’s a tragic disaster, and there’s a letter at the end being like “don’t do what they did, that sucks.” [laughs]. That was the entire concept of that, basically. 

As time started shifting towards the now we started reading these books where another teenager would notice or do something about it but there wasn’t much focus on that. It was all a catalyst for something else happening. And when I was finally old enough to go to highschool myself in 2005 when the shift was happening I learned that because you see these other teenagers every single day you notice when something is building over time or when something changes overnight. You legally have to be with these people the entire year. A lot of the time regardless of whether or not the teenager has the best idea on how to fix it or the best resources to fix the situation they are often the first responders to any situation. 

A lot of the time now, because we live in the Information Age, teenagers have much more resources than they had in the past to be able to genuinely help their friends or figure out a solution that works. So now we have this society of people who are first responders, educated, and kind of like, you know, able to act on the natural impulses of caring about those around them. Things can go a lot smoother. In every circumstance I had growing up as a teenager, regardless of whether teenagers were the ones to fix the situation, they were always the first to try to be a hero in that situation. I want to talk about that.

Have you always had an interest in Greek Mythology or was it something that came about in writing this story in particular? 

When I was in elementary school, I attended a school with Latin as a language for teaching. There were no other languages, just Latin, and we had a Greek and Latin cultural history course that we all took together. We used to say the Pledge of Allegiance in Latin. It was a cultural immersion. I don’t know why they chose to do this for all these eight to six-year-olds, but it was the bedrock of my exposure to storytelling and culture depth from a culture that’s not my own. So it’s like I’m returning to my roots to pull this specific thing out.

It is worthwhile to mention that there’s not a lot of Greek myth stories published by Greek authors. There’s kind of an imbalance in publishing power in that regard. I am not Greek; I’m African-American and Scottish, so I wanted to keep the details to a minimum and try not to co-opt certain cultural elements from it. It was more like the surface-level exploration of the meaning of the parable while I was doing this analysis of it for my work.

When you approach something like this — loosely calling it a retelling or re interpretation — how do you choose what elements of the myth to keep? How thorough is the process? 

I describe it as a love letter to Icarus and Daedalus. When I was a kid, hearing the original story was one of the first ripe tragedies a child could understand. That you can love something so much that it can lead to destruction. Growing up as a young person it’s rare to see that happen with other kids and teenagers.

Usually we don’t have the resources to love something to our own destruction unless it’s something like drugs. Mostly it’s hobbies and stuff. But we see it with adults constantly. We see someone who is so aggressively in love with their work that they neglect their child. You see all these things where parents are like “I want you to be a basketball player” and the child is like “I don’t even like sports” [laughs.] 

All of that is such a rich, present experience of youth. The story Icarus is about a child who after being cooped up for so long sees the sun he gets so excited. It’s about the tragedy of being a parent watching your child’s feathers and the waves and all that. It’s about what it is like to be a child and understand yours parents preoccupation and how their focus on is destroying them and by extension destroying you and being like ‘this is something I don’t want to be involved in.’ The book is about breaking generational curses which is a topic I’ve discussed a majority of books throughout my career. When I was thinking about the original myth I was thinking about what lessons I wanted to reframe for the audience of teenagers today that might need to see something specific. 

When you’re writing this book is there a certain character, or element that springboards the process? Or is it layers of ideas over time?

Kind of both. Originally you decide what character you want the story to be through the eyes of. Do you want the story to be through the eyes of Icarus, the child, or through the eyes of Daedalus. Or do you want it to be an overhead narrator sort of situation. That’s kind of how you start. For me personally I want to have a deep understanding of the conversation of whatever myth it is.

I’m not working in isolation with this story and saying “I pulled this from myself and I pulled this from the story and that’s it.” Usually when I do a retelling I like to read peoples thesis, like masters thesis and doctoral thesis about these kind of works where people spent years thinking about something. You can use the work that they have and the research and the time they’ve had to build out the understanding of, you know, the myth and the educational conversation about the myth. 

All so that you know what you’re getting into because people who write don’t really think about this but for like, a Peter Pan story since I wrote a Peter Pan book the people who are rushing out to buy it are fans of the story who’ve read a lot about it. You are giving your work to a panel of experts. So when I’m thinking of a story like Icarus I don’t want to add something or make some twist that isn’t well-represented or isn’t representative of the conversation people have been having. Those who are familiar with it will immediately know that I know nothing about the global conversation about the concept that is in my book. So doing the extra work to prepare yourself is extremely important when doing retelling. 

I was going to ask your writing process. Are there elements that change book to book or with Icarus in particular? Or does your process relatively stay the same?

My writing process is pretty cut and dry. I try to do it the same way so I know I can get similar results. My outlines are very detailed and I don’t deviate from them. I’m very much an architect not a gardener. I know what I’m going to write and then do it. I do multiple outlines for my books. The first one is very much just plot. The second one is the emotional journey I expect my readers to be going on as they’re reading the story. I want to plan the emotional beats and actually think about what they’re supposed to be feeling so I can control the weight of it and where their emotions go. 

Then I do literary analysis of my own work as though I did not write it so I can think about how someone might do a literary analysis of my work. Which people have done and it’s very intimate to read them. But you know I want to make sure I have that control. Then usually I sit down and break each section of the plot into parts and am like “well today I was supposed to write about xyz” and I just write about that.

Another thing that I think is kind of controversial but not really when you hear what it — I read all of my reviews. If anyone has written anything about me or about any of my books online I’ve read it regardless if it’s positive or negative. I think it’s really important to have an understanding of what your audience wants from you. What they think you can work harder on and build a bit of a stronger baseline on. And what things they like about your work. Books are art, yes, but at the end of the day they’re also products. They are a product designed for a specific audience. So if my audience is like ‘Kayla needs to work more on xyz’ then I’m going to spend some time educating myself on how to do that so that I can better craft this product for their consumption. 

So I’ll go through reviews of my previous work and see what people really liked and then retain those things and tweak other things. In Icarus, for people who loved The Wicker King, it should feel like The Wicker King but slightly more refined. 

Interesting — I guess I wouldn’t know if it’s controversial but I think it’s very natural to want to know what people are saying. Has there ever been a comment where you’ve been like this person is absolutely wrong or do you even take those comments into consideration? 

Some of my favorte reviews are like one or two star reviews. i had a one star review from a woman who had read The Wicker King which is a story of horrific neglect from parents, school, police — just everyone neglecting these children. She wrote ‘I didn’t like this book, none of this stuff was supposed to happen.’ Just so sad. 

I get a lot of like one and two star reviews where people say ‘I hated this book but I loved this line.’ It’s like you hate it so much you couldn’t help but compliment it? I’m making it through somehow. 

When it comes to reviews that are really harsh or really mean — the kind of stuff that would make you feel bad — a lot of the time if it’s on Goodreads I’ll click on their account to see what they actually read. Not necessarily to discount the person’s opinion but to see what their knowledge base is for what they’re talking about. A lot of people who are deeply into classic literature like Frankenstein, adult classics, hate my stuff. It’s completely fine. But if your baseline is some of the best literature that the world has put out, ever — I’m 32. I’m doing the best I can, I totally get it. It’s okay to not like, very, very fair. I appreciate it. 

If someone is really into young adult fiction, similar to my peers, and doesn’t like it, I take it more as a warning sign. What did I do to make somebody who likes the kind of content I usually build out not like this? Maybe I’ll alter that a little bit in what I’m designing. It’s usually if a lot of people are saying the same thing. One of the things that people didn’t like about Darling was how I described clothes and the interiors of buildings. So I just don’t do it anymore.

A lot of people who read romance novels, traditional romance novels, they’re not into the slow burn or the structure of the way that I write love and affection. Until they are at the part. So when Icarus and Helios have their little mini vacation together, they start liking the book, not any of the beginning of it. This is fair because it lets me know that for people who love love, that part of my work is the strongest. If I want to write to that audience, I can do a deeper development. It really is a developmental study. Nothing ever really makes me feel that bad, even if someone is really mean to me. It’s kind of like you deserve to have your opinion, and I support the things you don’t like. That’s completely fine; I just want to understand it.

It’s a heavy book by nature but there’s a lot of light and humor. How important to you is it to marry that balance between ‘yes there’s dark things happening but there’s hope.’ 

I feel like it’s very close to the experience I had as a teenager. Whenever anything bad happened, there was always some funny hijink element to how we were trying to fix it or reacting to it. I just feel like it’s very natural to how teenagers are. When I write dialogue I used to do teaching exercises with myself about how to write dialogue. I’d practice writing something in the way somebody would say it, as opposed to writing what I want them to say. All of the reactions and the funny stuff are from that.

In regards to my media diet and why I write in that way, I grew up with a lot of anime, manga, and Korean films. There’s this really interesting way that tragedy or horror, things that are bad, balance with small elements of comedy or lightheartedness to have balance. I think a lot of American media things just kind of escalate and escalate. It’s very visible in Marvel stuff where the stakes are so high you don’t care anymore. Whereas when you escalate and then drop it a little bit and have more time to build it backup you get more of that emotional response to tragedy and pain. 

What are some of your biggest influences? Is it mainly other writers? You look at film, anime, and manga — do you pull from everything?

I’m actually really into movies. My books are kind of designed to feel like a movie. If you want to sit down and read it in one sitting, it’s about a four to six-hour experience. You can definitely do that. But many people break it into one or two or even four sittings, not something where you read some and let months go by. The design is to keep your emotional state pulled along with it. With the individual small chapters, it’s supposed to feel compulsive — like you’re eating chips. There’s this feeling that tugs you towards the middle, tugs you towards the end of that experience.

If you leave the book that spell is broken a bit and you need to get back into it to feel the fulfilling element of that. Also, the pacing of my book is more like a film. You get some information in the beginning and you have some time to get comfortable and settled into the world. And then the story starts ramping up. A lot of the time when people don’t like my books it’s because they opened it and thought I’m here for Helios and Icarus and skip through all these pages and go oh now they’re in love and I don’t know why.

He has these friends and everyone likes him but I don’t understand. They can’t get that emotional gravity because like with movies if you don’t watch the first ten minutes that gives you the baseline of how a story is starting — my mom always used to get up for snacks and come and sit down and be like “what’s happening” and I’m like you can’t care because you don’t know what’s going to happen. 

The other thing I’m really inspired by is fanfiction. I’ve talked about fanfiction and fandom a lot. I’ve been in fandoms, at this point, about 25 years. My analysis of fanfiction as an artform is that it is an incredibly indulgent artform. Every single element of it is designed to please at the most basic level. For the writer themselves in that community but also for the ideas that they have are very indulgent — even if they’re things that are kind of embarrassing. The way that fanfiction writers serve that indulgence because they’re not getting paid, it’s pure I want to see this, I want to read this, I’m coming to find this to read this — it’s fulfilling at a depth that a lot of traditional media isn’t.

With fanfiction, writers don’t have to do the labor of explaining the characters and introducing it because the people they are presenting to are, again, the panel of experts. They can get right into the meat of the depth of whatever it is they want to explore. So for scenes in Icarus like the first day that they kind of have their mini vacation and they wake up next to each other, that emotional depth of them waking up next to each other and what that is for them and the bed sharing trope experiences, the longer winded element of that feels self-indulgent.

And a lot of people who read my work are like “this feels like something on Wattpad or fanfiction.net.” The writing quality isn’t at all similar to that. What they’re noticing is the indulgence. They’re like ‘I’m getting too much of what I want — I want to be doing analysis. I don’t want to be feeling the way that I feel while I’m reading this thing. It reminds me of what I feel when I read what I want.’

Since you’re so in tune with your books do you have a favorite character, a favorite line? As a writer are you able to dissect your work and be like “no I know this is a part that I love the most”?

I do. I actually have two. There’s a line when they’re in the little bathhouse where Icarus looks at Helios and says “there’s a statue in Warsaw that’s like you.” And it’s this moment where Helios is waiting for Icarus to judge him in some way or react in some way and is so tense. And Icarus is like the best thing that I can say is what this person isn’t going to expect me to say — I’m going to say something else. It’s such a line that grounds this scene. This experience that this person has is so intensely personal and Icarus is like it’s not personal, it’s historical, it’s everything. You don’t have to feel like you are alone in the way that you are. There are, there have been, men like you since before we had words for it. 

There’s this other line that Helios says to Icarus [regarding his home] “you grew up here.”  He’s like this is my house but you were forced to grow up in this house because of how often you’ve spent here stealing. It happens when Icarus is feeling all these feelings about being in this house but not as an intruder. It’s a huge moment. I dont’ think a lot of people wrote anything about that quote but for me it was like, ‘this is it.’ 

Do you have advice for young writers who are trying to carve out their own space in this medium? 

From my personal experience, I think you should figure out a way of writing that feels most comfortable to you. I think a lot of people who are just getting into writing want to write like their favorite author. And that may be struggling against their natural artistic impulses. Figuring out if you like to write in first person, second person, or third person, what type of perspective you want, if you want large narration — Figuring out and trying out a lot of types of writing and figuring out what feels easiest — choose that one [laughs]. People will be like, ‘You have to try something harder.’ No. Pick the one that feels the most natural to you.

When it is easy to put words on the page then you have the ability to actually improve your craft. If you’re someone who can only write in second person the most difficult and horrible tone to work with…if that is what you are good at writing and what comes easiest to you you have the emotional energy to add beauty to that. To add depth and starkness and really build out an artistic voice. 

Another thing I think is really important is understanding that becoming a novelist specifically is an act of endurance. It’s more important to figure out how to finish a book than to get into the cycle of trying to brand a book. I’ve known many writers who have these really beautiful worlds built out in their heads and pages and pages of drawings of their characters and maps that they’ve made and lists of their characters’ feelings and plot stuff, and they haven’t written anywhere close to the end of their book. Those people are not published at all. I don’t know if they ever will be. Because the endurance of writing the book is the difference between being a storyteller in isolation and becoming a novelist as an art form.

When you think about book writing everybody has different ways to write things. For me it takes about three months to write a book. For a lot of my friends it takes a year, two years, something like that. Icarus I wrote it 60 days. 

Oh my god!

Figuring out everything about your own endurance is what allows you to be able to finish a book. After the first time you finish one it gives you clarity, almost like when you turn 26 and you’re like ‘oh no I understand many things.’ It gives you clarity on the flavor of endurance that you have for a certain process. Once you get that it gives you the ability to write many books after that. Once you finish it that’s when it happens. If you’re still in the stages of writing it you wind up being on a kind of merry-go-round of that experience from what I’ve seen historically speaking. 

For the first part of what I said regarding finding your voice…Writing the way The Wicker King is and writing the way Icarus is is how I write. It’s just what it is. For Darling, I tried something different. I wrote it the way other people write books, and it didn’t sell how I wanted it to. There are consequences to turning away from the version of yourself that is your truest self.

While it is incredibly ambitious of me to do that, and it did sell fairly well, and people do come up to me to tell me it’s their favorite novel that I’ve written, you can actively tell that I’m fighting against my natural instincts with the writing that it is. When you hold up the two pieces of writing next to each other with Icarus and Darling you can really see that. The betrayal is not worth it for your artistic self to try and sound like something that you’re not.

Lastly, can you share about what’s next for you?

After I wrote Icarus, purchased by HarperCollins, they also purchased a second option from me. The book is called The Corruption of Hollis Brown and it’s written in a similar style to Icarus. It’s a story set in a very economically disadvantaged town about a boy who winds up being possessed by a ghost who falls in love with the ghost who is possessing him. It’s a really interesting concept for a book. Very like Venom and forming this relationship in the same body. 

It’s a really interesting concept because in most traditional horror or horror romance and ghost related stuff the corruptive force is the ghost. But in this corruptive force is Hollis, the main character. There’s a moment where they have this internal struggle about it and Hollis becomes very focused on what the potential of this circumstance offers them. So the title of the book is The Corruption of Hollis Brown as in, Hollis Brown is being corrupted. But halfway through the book you’re like oh, this is Hollis Brown’s corruption and he is the corruptive force. It’s a really cool concept. 

Icarus is available now for purchase.